Mistletoe
by WL.Erkling
Summary: Oliver Wood has been running—running from home, love, himself. When he finds himself in Romania on Christmas Eve, will a chance encounter with Charlie Weasley set him running again?


Written for the Quills & Parchment Mistletoe Competition

Prompt: Oliver Wood is stuck in Romania for a Christmas Day match. He is convinced this will be the worst Christmas Eve he's ever had until he happens upon Charlie Weasley.

All canon character, plots, and situations from the Harry Potter series belong to JK Rowling.

Have you ever heard the phrase silence is deafening? What about its opposite? I bet you haven't. It doesn't really exist. That's because people feel comfort in the noise. They don't know how to wrap themselves in whispers and let the chill of their own breath glide along their skin until that's all they can feel, all they know. This place is a fucking hole in the ground, but it's better than listening to their drunken cries and their adulterous sex and the lies, so many lies. There are lies they tell the women, but then there are lies they tell themselves. Those, they start to believe after a while. That's why I had to get away. I didn't want to start believing my own.

It's a bit like home here. Sort of sad, really. There are the regulars, sitting at the bar with heads hanging low into their ale. Across the way, there's a young couple dancing wordlessly to the music as if nothing around them matters. Occasionally, his hand rides up beneath her shirt and she bats it away, laughing and moving sinuously against him as if she has to try. She already knows he's in love. She could have whatever she wants. All she has to do is ask and it'll be hers. That's the way of young love.

Perhaps I'm bitter now, across the world and so many years away from the love I thought I had. It's like this mead. Heady at first. As the first few sips go down, it warms you and your body begins to relax into it. Then you drink some more and the flavours explode on your tongue and as the aftertaste lingers, it's almost too much, but then it falls flat, warm and stale. What used to be lightning on your lips now burns like acid down your throat. Yeah, I guess I'm bitter.

At first, I thought the team would help with all of this. Puddlemere was supposed to be my escape. What a fucking joke. We move from shite hotel to shite hotel and while I burrow deeper into myself, these blokes seem to throw it all further away. Some of them are engaged, married, have children. On longer breaks, they floo home and lie through their teeth about how lonely they've been, but the only lonely part of it is the truth they left behind somewhere overseas.

I thought about writing to him, making one last effort, but word came through that the option's no longer available. So it is that I get to watch this sad lot spend their Christmas eve in a pub waiting for the night to be over. Might as well get pissed and forget it, if I'm not going to remember it. It's sad enough this bloody mistletoe's been bobbin' round my head all evening without another soul worth reaching for.

"Bloody fuck, Meralda. What did you do this time? Ignore all the warming charms on purpose?" Oh, he's a loud one. Might as well get my mead and retreat.

"Not likely, Charlie."

"Meralda, it seems the man wants a drink." He tips a thumb toward me. Of course he's got one of those stupid mistletoe dancing round his ear, hopping and causing a ruckus with his ponytail. "Her name's Esmeralda, but if you call her that, you might find a little more than mead in your drink." The man just bloody wiggled his eyebrows at me. He yelped as a hex bit him on the nose, turning it purple for a minute, then leaving a holly leaf imprinted there. "Bloody wench." They both laughed as I looked from one to the other. "Back to these again, eh?" He reached out and flicked the mistletoe above my head.

"You bet your arse on it, Weasley."

"Weasley?" I know that name.

"Yea. Charlie Weasley, dragon extraordinaire, at your service." There go the eyebrows again.

"Wood. Oliver Wood." Finally, some mead. This mug is a bit better than the last. I wonder why she's upgraded me from the sludge I was offered before. Charlie watches as I drink, a twinkle in his eyes.

"I can't believe you're letting him drink that." She laughs, grabs the mug and switches it out. Whatever this is, it's brill.

"Better?"

"Much."

"What brings a Scotsman like yourself all the way out to Romania? I know it isn't the scenery."

"Quidditch game tomorrow."

"They have you lot playing on Christmas?" I nod. "That's just not right. What about your families?" He looks down at his wrist for a moment, playing with a thick leather band.

"Don't have any left."

"You're not married? No wife and kids? Lover?" I point to the mistletoe above my head.

"Obviously not."

"Oh, yeah. Shame, that." It's time for my eyebrow to go up, but he's swirling the head on his ale and by the time he looks back, he doesn't seem to notice. "So why are you here? I saw the hotel full of whom I presume are your teammates engaging in rather… wholesome activities with the locals. Why aren't you up there with them?"

"Not my scene." His blue eyes hold me to the bar stool for a minute, unable to lift my drink.

"Then what is your scene?" For a minute, I look at him. Really look at him. Fiery auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail with a long strip of leather, the ends dangling just above his neck line. Striking blue eyes which are light and deep. A talon pierced through one ear lobe which dangles against the square line of his jaw as he talks. He's tall, but not incredibly broad. There is strength there, but it's contained—coiled energy. He's wearing thick hide pants and a vest which is made from the same overlapping leather. His shirt, peeking out from beneath the vest, is tan and I can see the sweat and dirt smeared across the sleeves. I hear laughing and look up.

"What?"

"You're staring, Oliver."

"Just thinking. I don't… I am not who they are." He nods, as if he can possibly understand what I've just tried to say. I don't understand it myself, really. "Maybe I should get back." I dig in my pockets for some sickles to throw on the counter for my last drink but his grip stops me.

"Wait." Everything in my body is humming.

"Why?"

"Just… Let's talk some more, yeah?" His eyes are pleading as he stares up at me and I nod once before sitting down again.

"Yeah, okay." His smile is warm, soft. Meralda slides another mug toward me and I grab it without thinking, sipping slowly. "So what do you do here, Charlie? How did you end up so far from Hogwarts?" His head tilts, perhaps not realizing I knew.

"So you've figured it out then?" I nod, waiting for him to continue. "Got an apprenticeship on the dragon preserve here. Haven't left."

"What do you do with them? The dragons, I mean." He smiled, and it's a broad, bare-toothed grin.

"Mostly clean up their shit while they're injured. Our preserve is used for rehabilitation. We round up injured dragons and young dragons in danger of being poached or going extinct. We have these containment spells that spread over natural caves and springs, so they don't have to be cooped up inside some building somewhere. It would harm their magical cores to be inside a metal structure like that for too long." He paused there, taking a drink and when he set his mug down, laughed a little. "I'm rambling, aren't I?"

"A bit, but it's quite all right. I've not been around dragons much myself. I bet they're fascinating." I couldn't tell him that I was more fascinated by the way his nose scrunched when he got incredibly excited over something or the way his hands seemed to keep running over the smooth, reinforced leather of his trousers. "What else do you want to tell me?"

"What would you like to know?"

"Anything? I'm sure you know about quidditch and I'd really like to not talk about that for a while." The corner of his mouth quirked up at that.

"My brothers are obsessed with the game, so no offense, but I've had my fill."

"None taken."

"How would you like to go for a walk, Oliver Wood?" I'd like nothing more.

"Sure. Yea, let's go." This time, he lets me throw some change on the bar and we head out.

"Thanks, Meralda."

"Night, boys."

The smell of Romania is a bit wild. It's a mixture of forest and open roads and things unknown that I am drawn to, much like Charlie Weasley. As if he's read that exact thought, he walks past me to the path behind the pub and all I can see are his boots lightly kicking snow. I've practically run into him before I realize he's stopped. His arms come out to brace me and the heat of him comes through my cloak, soaking directly into my skin.

"I'm surprised, you know."

"Excuse me?" Every muscle in my body is tensing now, waiting for the inevitable. I can't believe I was stupid enough to follow a man I barely know into the dark of night while I'm pissed. I fumble for my wand and he shakes his head.

"Oliver." The word paralyzes me. His hand comes up to caress the barest edge of my jaw. "I'm surprised that you don't have the wife and kids. At the very least a lover." His eyes are a much darker shade of blue as I fall into them. There's nothing for it really. I lean forward and brush my lips against his, seizing the back of his neck as if he'd flee the instant I touch him. We fumble for a moment until the angle is right and the parts just seem to work together. Then there is the need to breathe and I pull away, one hand on his chest.

"I did once." I'm not sure he's heard. I'm not sure I've said it aloud, until he steps back.

"Is that why you're so far from home? Is that why you're here, in Romania, on Christmas eve?" I have to think about what he's said. There are many reasons for me to be here. Many reasons I've left Scotland. The war took its toll on all of us. First my parents went up in flames defending the only home I've ever known, followed by so many friends. Then I just fucking sat there as he spat in my face and left… No. I won't tell him any of that. This isn't the time. Isn't the place.

"There really wasn't anything keeping me there." He quirks that eyebrow again and I'm irritated now.

"What? Why did you run away? You have a lot of family at home. I'm sure they'd love to see you." He looks hurt at the venom in my voice, but it's too late. The words are gone and hanging on the air between us. I can't take them back and I'm not sure if I should try.

"I have my reasons, too." He's fiddling with the bracelet again. "Sometimes we need to leave more than we need to stay." I've done it again. Those are words that resonate something deep within me that I've tried not to think about. I cannot think about this.

"Fuck."

There are no more words. His hands wrap around my waist and we are sliding tongues against teeth that nearly bite in their urgency to consume. I can feel him breathing deeply as he threads his fingers beneath my cloak, tugging lightly at my shirt and dipping into my trousers. I can't help the gasp that claws its way out as he sears fingerprints into my frosted flesh. He is warm and I am nothing but a frozen carcass. I feel his teeth as they graze the column of my throat. He delights in this. When my own hands work their way beneath his vest to trace the outline of muscle, I can feel his body go rigid and the moan that licks its way up to my ear is a caress I very much enjoy.

We are pressed up against a tree now, since in the absence of thought, he has walked my ghost-like legs backward. I cannot concentrate with his hand worming its way further toward my arse, his thigh wedged between my own, and the grind of our bodies exuding the scent of leather and sweat. There. Right there, I can feel him as he starts to roll his hips against my thigh. There is a sticky sweetness in forgetting who I am while letting him thrash against every exposed part of me—and even those that aren't. Just as his moans grow deeper against my lips, his tongue laving down my neck to bite at the juncture of muscle there, I shudder against him. Panic rushes in as tendrils of cold wrap their greedy fingers round my throat and choke everything.

Right now, he is the warm explosion on my tongue, but all too soon, I will be the stale mead left on the bar counter because it isn't good enough. Wait. Am I mixing that up? Am I the mead? _Was_ I? Fuck. I can't breathe. His tongue is dipping into the underside of my clavicle while he pins my arms above my head and it's too much. Not enough.

I'm not them, I don't want to be them. "Gods in bloody hell, this is amazing, but we need to stop." I rest my forehead against his and we breathe. The night is still and all I can hear is his exhalation in my ear, feel as it glides along my skin until that's all I can focus on, all I know. He grabs my chin and tilts it up until a chaste kiss slides gently across my swollen lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Meralda's enchanted mistletoe have followed us to this wasteland of discarded propriety. However, they are not separate and apart anymore; rather, they are entwined as one spinning branch now woven together above our heads. Charlie looks up at the enchanted greenery before returning those spinning blue depths to me.

"I hope you come back, Oliver Wood. There's more here for you than stale ale and quidditch. So much more. Happy Christmas." I watch as he turns back into the pub, leaving me outside to wonder if the simple act of breathing will ever be the same again.


End file.
